The Lead Discovery Center and the Korean Drug Development Fund have entered into an agreement to facilitate the interaction between LDC and the prospering South Korean biotech scene.
April 2, 2019 Dortmund, Germany – Seoul, South Korea. The Lead Discovery Center (LDC) and the Korean Drug Development Fund (KDDF) have entered into an agreement to facilitate the interaction between LDC and the prospering South Korean biotech scene. The aim of the collaboration is to facilitate the licensing of assets from LDC’s innovative R&D pipeline to South Korean biotechs, who will then advance the projects into the clinic. KDDF will assist LDC in identifying such entities and hopes to support the respective biotechs financially once a licence deal has been concluded. By attracting highly innovative assets, KDDF is substantially and sustainably stimulating the Korean drug discovery community, creating an investor-friendly climate.
The collaboration agreement between KDDF and LDC was signed during this year´s Global C&D partnering conference in Seoul in February.
“We are delighted to intensify our interaction with the biotech community in South Korea. The LDC has already closed three licensing deals with South Korean biotechs, so we are now building on these inroads into South Korea’s drug discovery ecosystem to the benefit of our partners. In collaboration with the KDDF, we hope to broaden our existing relationship and increase the number of innovative assets licensed to South Korean biotechs. The goal is to better advance LDC early drug discovery assets to the clinic,” commented Bert Klebl, CEO and CSO of the LDC.
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PR Lead Discovery Center
+49 (0)231-97 42 70 00
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About the LDC
The Lead Discovery Center (LDC) was established in 2008 as a novel approach to capitalize on the potential of excellent basic research for the discovery of new therapies for diseases with high medical need.
The LDC takes on promising early-stage projects from academia and transforms them into innovative pharmaceutical leads that reach initial proof-of-concept in animals. In close collaboration with high-profile partners from academia and industry, the LDC is building a strong and growing portfolio of small molecule leads with exceptional medical and commercial potential.
The LDC sustains a strong partnership with the Max Planck Society, has licensed assets and formed alliances with AstraZeneca, Bayer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Merck KGaA, Daiichi-Sankyo, Qurient, Johnson&Johnson Innovation, Sotio, RaND, Apeiron Biologics and Gruenenthal as well as leading translational drug discovery centres around the globe.
>> More information at www.lead-discovery.de
About the KDDF
Established in September 2011, the Korea Drug Development Fund (KDDF), a consortium of three health-related Korean Ministries – the Ministry of Science, ICT, and Future Planning; the Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy; and the Ministry of Health and Welfare – is a government-initiated drug development program, which aims to transform Korea into a global leader for new drug development and to enhance national competitiveness in the global arena.
In the first phase of the project, KDDF focused on building its own business portfolio and process that is essential to global drug development. In consequence, this helped us establish a top-notch screening system for numerous research and development (R&D) projects, coupled with a successful milestone-based output management system. In the subsequent second phase of the project, KDDF further materialized its innovation-driven portfolio management strategy through a newly introduced joint R&D program with global Big Pharma, the actual developers who aspire to commercialize early stage assets, and continued to expand its support in the Research & Business Development (R&BD) field.
